


the part that loved

by Devilishdetails



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Marauders, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 14:06:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17122790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devilishdetails/pseuds/Devilishdetails
Summary: The (living) Marauders learn that the Potters are dead.





	the part that loved

Bathilda Bagshot was the first to the Potter house.

She’d heard the blast from down the street from where she stood on her stoop, handing out candy to the Muggle children trick-or-treating. She heard it and she knew, she _knew_ , what had happened.

She dropped the bowl and ran.

Half the roof was blown off--the part over Harry’s nursery--and the front door gaped open, not crooked on its hinges but a violation all the same. She burst in and charged toward the stairs, not pausing even when she saw James lying on the floor, still.

In the doorway of the nursery, Bathilda froze. Sitting in his crib, crying, was little Harry Potter. Alive.

“Mama,” he cried, hands on his forehead. “Mama, mama.”

Lily was sprawled on the floor in front of the crib; Bathilda had to step over her to reach Harry. She brushed her fingers, so gently, across Harry’s forehead, where a bright red welt now marred his soft skin.

Bathilda lifted him slowly, held him to her. “Shh, shh,” she said. “It’ll be alright. Just a little bump. Everything will be alright.” With her free hand, she cast a Patronus. Harry blinked at it, then giggled and started playing with the silver mist wafting off her tortoise.

“Dumbledore,” said Bathilda. “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named killed Lily and James, but the boy lives. Harry Potter lives.”

With a flick of her wand, Bathilda sent the Patronus off to Dumbledore.  
_______

Later, Sirius wouldn’t remember so clearly finding Peter’s flat empty, the flight to Godric’s Hollow, or the empty feeling that turned into a pain like Cruciatus when he landed in front of the Potters’ destroyed house.

He would remember, though, finding James on the floor, glasses crooked and broken. Sirius knelt down beside James, reaching a shaking hand towards his limp arm. But then there were sounds on the stairs, and Sirius leapt back and up, flinging a curse into the hall with a wordless cry. The wall blackened and crumbled where it hit--Sirius couldn’t aim with his hand trembling like it was, but maybe it wouldn’t matter because James and Lily and Harry were dead.

“Who’s there?!” came a shout, and Sirius recognized the voice as that of Rubeus Hagrid. 

“Sirius Black,” he managed to reply, his own voice a rasp. 

Hagrid came down the stairs, ducking his head as he passed through the doorway. In the crook of one arm, Sirius saw a small, unmoving bundle, and he realized that he couldn’t bear to see his godson dead too.

And then there was a small sniffle and a cry, and Harry was alive.

“He’s alive,” Sirius said, dumbfounded.

Hagrid started talking, telling him that Dumbledore had sent him to fetch Harry, that Lily was dead upstairs and how he knew Sirius was Harry’s godfather but Dumbledore had told him to take Harry off to Lily’s sister’s house. At some point, Hagrid began to bawl.

Sirius, though, was only barely listening. He reached out, and this time he could touch, feel the warmth and life in Harry’s cheek, the love that had brought Harry into the world and had stopped him from leaving it.

It was best, really, if someone else took care of Harry. Everyone knew Sirius was mad, especially so with the war; Sirius had made sure of it. Taking risks, setting fires, getting into fights he had to be pulled out of. Just as he was at school, but now people died from it. Sirius knew it was only a matter of time before he went out in a blaze, and Harry had already lost his parents. 

“Take my bike,” Sirius said, digging the keys out of his pocket. “You can’t floo with him, he wiggles too much.”

“Righ’, thanks,” Hagrid said.

Sirius pressed a kiss to Harry’s forehead, right where James’s hair met the corner of Lily’s eye, and stepped back, dropping his hand.

“Keep him safe,” Sirius said. “For Lily and James.”

He breathed deep, let his windblown hair fall into his face as his anger took over, blood buzzing beneath his skin and fingernails digging like claws into his palms. He didn’t look back. 

Sirius had a hunt to get on with. Grief, like love, would only slow him down.  
_______

No one ever realized it, but usually Peter won more than he lost. It was just like Quidditch--you didn’t have to play to win when your team did. And Peter was excellent at choosing the winning team. Until today, apparently.

He scrambled down the street in his rat form, dodging around the shingles that had been flung when the house exploded. The Dark Lord dead, and Lily and James, too; the Order had won, but only barely. And though they didn’t know he was the traitor, he couldn’t take part in the celebrations until Sirius was taken care of.

He’d heard Sirius’s bike from down the street, and then the crack of Sirius Apparating away after Hagrid put the child on the bike and flew away. Sirius was after him now, he knew, but Peter already had a plan in place. No one but Sirius knew that Peter had been Secret Keeper, and Sirius was impulsive. Violent. A bit mad, really.

But now the house was empty. Muggles were starting to gather; the Fidelius Charm seemed to have broken with the roof. Peter slipped through the open doorway, quick and light and invisible. He stopped when he saw James.

His glasses were broken.

It was a long time before Peter could move, until he heard Muggle sirens approaching. He climbed the stairs, stopping again when he reached the nursery and found Lily. With her head on the floor, she seemed to stare right at him.

There seemed at first to be no sign of the Dark Lord, but Peter was good at finding things. Half under the rocking chair was the Dark Lord’s wand. 

Peter magicked it into his pocket and tried not to feel Lily’s blank stare on his back as crept away.  
_______

Remus returned to London with a broken arm and the taste of blood in his mouth. McGonagall told him it had been two days since You-Know-Who was defeated. Two days since James and Lily were killed; two days since Sirius betrayed them. One day since Sirius murdered Peter, laughing the whole time.

Within ten minutes, he was on his way to Azkaban. No matter that it was on every street corner, in the cheers and sobs of every witch and wizard he met; he needed to hear it from Sirius’s lips, see it for himself. He called in favor after favor, played on his position in the Order and on every name he could think of--even those of his dead friends, though it made him sick. 

Eight hours later, Remus stood on the steps, staring up at the grey stone walls that held his best friend. Former best friend. If they’d ever truly been friends at all.

All that effort, and now he couldn’t go inside. His feet wouldn’t take him through the door. 

_Scared?_ Sirius laughed, just as daring and arrogant now as the first time he’d ever said it, when they snuck out past curfew three nights into their first year.

 _No_ , Remus had replied then, the indignant lie of a boy who wanted desperately to make friends. Banishing his hesitations, he’d jumped through the portrait hole and ducked under the invisibility cloak with James. When Sirius and Peter joined them a moment later, they’d all beamed at each other for a moment, then giddily laughed their way down the hall.

Remus watched the Dementors sweeping in and out of the fortress. He’d encountered them before in the Ministry, there to perform a Kiss on a mass murderer, and knew well the feeling of cold, empty desolation and fear that they brought. It had been in him for hours, long before he reached Azkaban; since he heard the news, he suspected. He just hadn’t wanted to recognize it.

There was nothing Sirius could tell him that he didn’t already know.

 _Yes_ , Remus thought back as he turned away. _Scared, and alone._

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Louise Gluck's "The Triumph of Achilles."
> 
> In true devilish fashion, I wrote this years before I posted it, but this time it was only two years instead of three! Getting faster every time.
> 
> Thanks, as always, to liar_of_lesbos, without whom I would never publish anything.


End file.
